Intra-Industry Competitor Analysis as the World\'s Largest

Intra-Industry Competitor Analysis

As the world's largest facilitator of online travel arrangements, Expedia Inc. has grown from its eponymous website to become an industry titan in just under two decades. Holding lucrative brands such as Hotels.com and the Hotwire Group among its portfolio of assets, and possessing a dominant share of the online travel booking market for several consecutive years, the executive management structure in place at Expedia Inc. has successfully adapted and evolved the company's concept to fend off challenges from its three chief competitors: Priceline.com, Orbitz.com, and Travelocity.com. The following comparative summary is intended to highlight the core components of each of these three rivals, in an attempt to determine which competitor poses the most viable threat to Expedia Inc.'s share of the online travel industry.

Priceline.com:

One of the original entrants into the online travel arena during e-commerce's heyday in the late 1990's, Priceline.com operates from a physical headquarters located in Norwalk, Connecticut, and was originally conceived by entrepreneur Jay S. Walker. Rather than provide airline tickets and hotel bookings directly, Priceline's patented "Name Your Own Price" business model allows the company to purchase supplies of unreserved fares at wholesale rates, while reselling them for a variable-rate profit on the open market. Holding an assortment of lucrative brands such as Booking.com, Agoda.com, KAYAK, and rentalcars.com, Priceline.com Inc. has emerged as a sustainable threat to Expedia's claim on the majority of market share, largely due to the company's savvy acquisition of international travel facilitator Booking.com in 2005. A recent report published by industry analyst Marketwatch.com observed that "Priceline's Booking.com business, which lists more than 335,000 hotels around the world, is the key source of the company's performance and why the Priceline's stock price has risen almost 59% this year, and is up 75% over the past year" (Crum), and it is based on the ascendancy of Booking.com as the most-visited online travel provider that Priceline.com Inc. has captured nearly an equal share of the market relative to Expedia.

Travelocity.com